Structure Determination of a Plant Virus at Atomic Resolution

Abstract

In these years, many number of protein structures are being determined, based on the development of new methodologies on X-ray protein crystallography, such as synchrotron radiation, area detectors, computers and software. Furthermore, we believe that there is no molecular weight limit on the structure determination.
We recently determined the atomic structure of a Rice Dwarf virus, which is a double-shelled plant virus with its molecular weight of 70Mda. This structure reveals the self-assembly mechanism of the component proteins.